S10 E2: Orthographic mapping is a cognitive process, with Katie Pace Miles, Ph.D.

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 Hi listeners, it's Susan here, our sister podcast, Beyond My Years, just launched its second season.

spk_0 After a webby award-winning debut, host Anna Torres kicked off season 2 by exploring the

spk_0 research on joy and laughter and how they can be leveraged effectively in schools.

spk_0 Here's what the research also said, that humor can be used to,

spk_0 listen and maintain attention, improve retention and information.

spk_0 That's available now in the Beyond My Years podcast feed.

spk_0 Your ability to orthographically map and store words in long-term memory for automatic retrieval

spk_0 winds up being the key to comprehension.

spk_0 This is Susan Lambert and welcome to Science of Reading the Podcast from Amplify.

spk_0 We're now onto episode 2 in our season 10 deep dive into comprehension.

spk_0 On this episode, we're exploring one of the gateways to comprehension, orthographic mapping.

spk_0 And today's guest is an expert on this topic.

spk_0 She is Dr. Katie Pays-Miles, associate professor and director of Reading Science Advanced Certificate at Brooklyn College,

spk_0 City University of New York.

spk_0 And along with Molly Ness, she authored the recent book Making Words Stick.

spk_0 Before we jump into this episode, I want to give you a quick definition of orthographic mapping

spk_0 and it comes right from the book at the center of today's episode.

spk_0 Orthographic mapping is a cognitive process that facilitates the storage of words in long-term memory

spk_0 by connecting a specific word spelling to its pronunciation and meaning.

spk_0 Basically, what we're saying is we want to help students understand the sounds that they hear,

spk_0 the letters that are represented by that sound, and when you put those sounds together in a word, what that word means.

spk_0 The cognitive process of bringing sounds, words, and meaning together is called orthographic mapping.

spk_0 Remember, this season we'll be tackling your comprehension related questions.

spk_0 Submit a question for me or our upcoming guests at amplify.com slash SOR mailbag.

spk_0 And now, here's Dr. Katie Pays-Miles.

spk_0 I'm so excited to have Katie Pays-Miles join us today on this episode of Science of Reading the Podcast.

spk_0 Katie, welcome.

spk_0 Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

spk_0 We are so excited to jump in and talk about this idea of orthographic mapping, but before we do that,

spk_0 I would love if you could introduce yourself to our listeners and give a little bit of your backstory.

spk_0 Sure. So I'm a professor at Brooklyn College, which is a part of the City University of New York system.

spk_0 At the college, I'm the director of the Advanced Certificate in Reading Science, which is a one-year online deep dive into the science of reading the research behind it.

spk_0 This degree is primarily for New York City public school teachers, but anyone can apply.

spk_0 There's full scholarships for that program.

spk_0 Yes, that's been something that I developed over the last two years, and I'm just very enthusiastic about it.

spk_0 I'm also the co-founder of CUNY Reading Fellows.

spk_0 So again, CUNY stands for the City University of New York.

spk_0 We train. There's an incredible team that works at CUNY Reading Fellows. We train about 700 education majors each year, and they tutor over 2600 New York City public school students in need of structured literacy high impact tutoring.

spk_0 And I'm more recently the founder and president of a nonprofit called the Reading Institute, which provides low or no cost reading interventions and professional development for teachers.

spk_0 Wow, you have a lot going on there in the world of teaching reading and reading science.

spk_0 How did you get interested in this whole idea of reading?

spk_0 I was a teacher.

spk_0 And I actually my first, I started, my training was in second grade, and I was a kindergarten teacher, a third grade teacher, and during those years, I be just became fascinated with how some students learn how to read somewhat effortlessly.

spk_0 And for other students, it was such a struggle.

spk_0 And you were providing the same level of instruction. These students were all intelligent.

spk_0 What was going on here? And I became a reading specialist.

spk_0 So I was a reading specialist for grades three through five, which is interesting.

spk_0 And I received that job because I had this training in the younger years, and so many of these students in third through fifth grade were in need of really like remedial, like they needed to go back.

spk_0 And there's always a debate about using the term remediation intervention.

spk_0 And this is a whole part of my world now.

spk_0 But during that time is when I really started seeking out more answers.

spk_0 I was thinking, why is my case load for third through fifth graders so large?

spk_0 Why are so many of these students coming to me in those years unable to read in need of support?

spk_0 And I was so ill equipped.

spk_0 I was doing my best as a teacher and then as a reading specialist.

spk_0 And I wound up doing my master's in educational psychology because I felt like I wasn't learning what I needed to help these students in the field of education.

spk_0 So my master's in at psychology.

spk_0 And that's when I found the work of Dr. Linay Ari and my PhD is in educational psychology, learning development instruction with a specialization on the acquisition of literacy.

spk_0 My time with Dr. Linay Ari and my doctoral work is really what set the stage for what I do now.

spk_0 That's a really great story. I don't think that I've ever heard that part of what you did before.

spk_0 So thank you for sharing that.

spk_0 And it really brings to life the way that you organize the book and you really cover more than just K2, which is typical in early reading.

spk_0 So we're talking about sort of a K5 spread that you've included in this book.

spk_0 That's right.

spk_0 So with Molly Ness, which we've had on the podcast before.

spk_0 So shout out.

spk_0 You've written this book called Making Word Stick, a four step instructional routine to power up orthographic mapping.

spk_0 How did this come to be and what about orthographic mapping and why is it so critical?

spk_0 And to say it's a really hot topic right now that's often misunderstood.

spk_0 It really is and all the credit goes really to Dr. Linay Ari. I can't say this enough.

spk_0 So I mentioned my time with her. I had this privilege of being her student for five years over the course of my doctoral work in on a fellowship where I could really immerse myself in her research.

spk_0 I remember reading her research from the 70s through the 2000s.

spk_0 And I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on. She has over 200 research articles overwhelmingly experimental research articles.

spk_0 And I was able to read these and really build my own understanding of how this theory of orthographic mapping emerged out of her own pile of research.

spk_0 Now the theory of orthographic mapping has also been substantiated by many other researchers and other like troves of research.

spk_0 And simultaneously while I was reading that I was also then able to read her research and her other theory on the phases of word reading and spelling.

spk_0 And Ari's theory of the phases of word reading and spelling for me it's a further applied for teachers understanding of the theory of orthographic mapping.

spk_0 So the theory of orthographic mapping is about how the brain this cognitive process that goes on in the brain, which I'll talk about more in just a second, how that then moves through these phases of getting us from pre-alphabetic into accurate or corrective.

spk_0 And so that's how we can consolidate word reading and spelling.

spk_0 And for our listeners who haven't yet made a connection, Dr. Ari's phases of reading development are super important and super critical.

spk_0 So something every reading teacher should be aware of and know and you do a great job in this book of sort of outlining that.

spk_0 And the theory of orthographic mapping was also coined by Dr. Ari too, right?

spk_0 Correct. It's her theory of orthographic mapping.

spk_0 Yeah. And so we'll talk a little bit about orthographic mapping as a cognitive process. But before we get there, I just want to say that I've read through this book twice now.

spk_0 It is very accessible, a really straightforward way to understand this phases of reading development from Eri and orthographic mapping.

spk_0 And so I just want to shout out and say thank you to you and Molly for making it accessible and simplified in a way that you get the background information on it and then you can apply it. So congratulations on that.

spk_0 Thank you. So I really appreciate that. I know Molly does too. That was our whole goal is to ensure the teachers are able to understand the theory and apply it to best support their students.

spk_0 And just to go back a little bit about, you know, what motivated the two of you to do this, did you see that that teachers were not understanding what this was or like, why did you think there was a need for this book?

spk_0 Yes, I was constantly getting questions and requests to give talks on orthographic mapping. And what was interesting is I so I took this body of research that I had actually conducted with Linnea from about 2015 until about five years of research experimental studies.

spk_0 At that time, we're in COVID. There's a lot of requests for webinars and people started asking, can you distill this concept of orthographic mapping? Can you make this come to life for a teacher?

spk_0 And so you're taking all of these pretty heavy articles and saying all right, and then going back to my roots. And really I'm a reading teacher at heart.

spk_0 It's like, what does the reading teacher need to know? Well, she needs to know these things. And they can become what I always say about Dr. Aries theory of orthographic mapping is that it is my North star.

spk_0 Everything I do, I'm kind of looking and letting the theory of orthographic mapping guide me. So I started consolidating this research into talks that hopefully we're engaging for teachers relevance.

spk_0 And from there, I continued to conduct more research and analyses on lists of words and how lists of words interact with phonics, scope and sequences or student phonetic knowledge.

spk_0 And long story short, Amali and I are close colleagues. We have a lot of fun together and we thought, okay, instead of giving these disparate talks here, there, into certain teachers get the information others don't.

spk_0 Maybe we could put this out there in a way we really challenged ourselves and we held each other accountable for doing what you just said, which is ensuring that it's written for teachers who have to go into the classroom the next day.

spk_0 And use this knowledge to make a difference for the lives of all readers.

spk_0 I know when we talked in our pre-call, I said that listeners to this podcast really like to listen to and hear some of the research behind it, maybe some of a little more nerdy than what you've written in the book.

spk_0 So I wonder if we could get to that place of orthographic mapping and you note that it's a cognitive process. Can we talk about what both of those things mean in the theoretical sort of space?

spk_0 Sure. Yes. So we'll start if it's okay. We'll start with this. It's a cognitive, right? You just said it's a cognitive process. Like what does that even mean?

spk_0 What is right? And I'm not going to get crazy into like this part of the brain and that part of the brain. That's in the book if you want it. And also I understand when teachers are like, I don't want that part. I don't want that.

spk_0 I'm totally like absolutely what we all need to understand is that the cognitive process is referring to the concept of the reading brain, which think of it as a set of neural pathways.

spk_0 And these neural pathways are activated when you're trying to read and spell words, right? And it has to do with whether or not you're seeing the word, saying the word, hearing the word, trying to do something with the meaning of the word.

spk_0 And everyone knows this. There's different parts of the brain that deal with each one of those things. And there's got to be connections made between those emergent readers or striving readers have inefficient pathways that have been created.

spk_0 Or those connections require like a lot of blood flow. It's just not happening effortlessly. And what we do as instructors as teachers is what we're trying to do is build stronger neural connections so that it becomes more efficient.

spk_0 And when it becomes more efficient, it becomes less effortful. And by it, I mean reading and spelling words.

spk_0 When that becomes less effortful, you have more mental energy. We're going to talk about comprehension. We can review this when we talk about that. You have more mental energy for the most important thing, which is understanding what you're reading and building knowledge.

spk_0 Yeah. We will get to that in a minute. And I just want to do a follow up with this. So essentially what we're talking about is the process that helps develop automaticity or what I've heard referred to as instant word recognition.

spk_0 When you see a word, you can't unsee that word and you instantly recognize what it is. Is that right? That's perfect. Yeah. Ari uses the term automaticity automatic retrieval all the time. In schools, we often use instant retrieval. And that gets us into a little bit of a tricky place, which I probably shouldn't go there. Yeah, but you can follow that like instant retrieval. We start thinking sight words. Right. But I'm going to pull us back a little bit from that.

spk_0 And if we stay in the researcher realm, it's all about automatic retrieval from long term memory. And we get the words into long term memory through that making these very strong connections. I always go like this because I think of Ari's diagrams of connecting the spelling to the pronunciation of the word.

spk_0 And it's an actual mapping of the letters to the sounds. And each word is going to have this distinct mapping between the spelling and the pronunciation and it's distinct mapping to its meaning.

spk_0 And what listeners can't see you doing is sort of connecting your fingers with that, which is great in the book. There's a great diagram of what that looks like. And I think listeners will recognize that because we often see it basically the word pull the part with, you know, the sounds and mapping the letters.

spk_0 Ari calls that an an a malgum and a Malgum just to throw that I always like to think of it. And I always draw a circle and the end now I'm drawing a circle in the air.

spk_0 You have this mapping. My fingers are connecting. I have this arrow to the meaning. And I'm circling the whole thing. I'm like, this is the a Malgum that is stored in long term memory. And back to your point that is done eventually when that those connections are strengthened.

spk_0 So bringing it to the neural pathways when those connections are strengthened and you've had a lot of practice mapping and storing the word rain.

spk_0 I was using the example of rain. It's going to rain outside. I know that that's about our a I N. Yeah, instead of the rain of a ruler. Then eventually it can be automatically retrieved whether you want to read it or spell it.

spk_0 Yeah. That's great. And to link our listeners to a previous podcast. We had Dr. Jane Ashby on who did a lot of talking through eye tracking technology and how some of this has been.

spk_0 Yeah. And some of this has been better understood. So listeners, if you haven't listened to that one, go back and read listen. It's a great. It's a great link. All right. So why does this idea of it being a cognitive process actually matter.

spk_0 And I might say I often hear people saying, how do you teach orthographic mapping? It's not really a teachable process, right? Like you don't teach orthographic mapping. It's a process that happens. Can you help us with that distinction?

spk_0 That's right. That's right. So we've discussed the cognitive process that happens that can happen efficiently. It can happen less efficiently.

spk_0 But then as we know as teachers instruction plays a role. Right. So there is this overlay. There are some students who will naturally move through this process of orthographically mapping words and storing them a long term memory.

spk_0 But that is a very small percentage of students and I work overwhelmingly in the reading intervention space. Yeah. And the majority of students, as we all know, they need explicit systematic instruction. And it becomes like, okay, we'll explicit systematic instruction and what? Well, in order to facilitate the cognitive process of orthographically mapping words, there needs to be instruction that draws students attention to

spk_0 to the spelling and pronunciation mapping and meaning of the words. And again, that needs to be done in a systematic way. You're not just like grabbing at words and concepts because this all what this builds is over time. And really simply, this is like what phonics scope and sequence are you going to use?

spk_0 Okay. How extensive is that phonics scope and sequence? Each time you go to instruct on a phonetic concept, what types of activities are you doing? It's one thing to have a phonics scope and sequence. And it's another thing to actually instruct into that teach to that scope and sequence with activities that actually help facilitate the process.

spk_0 So you don't teach orthographic mapping because again, that's a cognitive process, but you can facilitate support long term storage of words. That makes sense. It makes sense. Can we talk a little bit about the research that undergirds this theory of orthographic mapping?

spk_0 Definitely. So there are loads of experiments. It's hard for me to even pick one. But I mentioned that I started reading experiments that Dr. Erie and others had conducted in the 70s.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 And they were randomly assigning students to receive. And these are all overwhelmingly the studies that I was reading of first were with emergent readers.

spk_0 They were randomly assigning students to receive either instruction that supported the students in seeing the word, the spelling of the word or not seeing the word.

spk_0 Sometimes the students would see the word and hear the word pronounced in context or they would see the word and hear the word pronounced in isolation.

spk_0 Okay. Anyway, there are loads of these studies and overwhelmingly what what these series of studies shows over time is that drawing students attention to the spelling of the word, providing the mapping and some support for what does that spelling result in regarding the pronunciation of the word.

spk_0 If there is some activity that can be done that in addition to just basic drawing students attention or providing an example or model, those were always to measure. Well, does that support the short term and then longer term retention for this ability to read and spell the word.

spk_0 Yeah. Okay. And so if we're thinking about the ones paying attention to the word, it's not the whole word then it's the is it the parts of the word. So we're actually looking more at a phonics process. Would that be right?

spk_0 Yeah, it's more of like it's more the process of mapping what that words spelling composition how it relates to its phonetic representation.

spk_0 Okay. And one there's another interesting series of studies that are has going to her phase theory where she would take students that she would preassess to determine whether they were in the pre alphabetical partial full or consolidated alphabetic phases.

spk_0 And she would have an experimental design where let's say these were partial alphabetic readers. She would then take these students randomly assign them to two instructional groups. One group would receive this explicit instruction on letter sound relations and how we're going to use that knowledge to decode or to spell the words.

spk_0 And the other group would not receive that. And then what she looked at post test was not only this retention of the words that were taught in the experiment, but the students ability to then apply those new skills to other words, which demonstrated this movement into the full alphabetic phase for the one group of students that received that type of instruction.

spk_0 Fascinating.

spk_0 Those series of studies are just incredible. Maybe some other time I could come back and we could just talk about phase theory.

spk_0 Yeah, for sure.

spk_0 It's a remarkable body of research by Ari.

spk_0 And this is relevant, especially relevant now as we're thinking about what states are doing across the country and talking about things like the queuing system is.

spk_0 It's not allowed in it's against the law in many states. It's not allowed in reading instruction in many states. And what you're talking about is a series of studies that actually demonstrating that this queuing approach kind of thing doesn't work, right?

spk_0 That is exactly it.

spk_0 And if there is evidence needed for that, right? Why it doesn't work? You can go directly to these studies about what moves students into the next phase of development.

spk_0 That's absolutely right. And in my work and my again holding orthographic mapping as this North star and my intervention work.

spk_0 I always say like what are the things that are needed for emergent readers? One of the number one things is when they first begin to learn to apply their letter knowledge to word reading.

spk_0 It's about developing good word reading habits.

spk_0 So these habits that form in kindergarten, if the habit is formed early on that we don't try to sound out the word that we don't have to slow down, use our letter sound knowledge and apply it methodologically.

spk_0 If we don't do that with young children, these bad habits form and we all know as adults how difficult it is to break bad habits.

spk_0 I love how you said that. And developing habits is often difficult, right? So I hear lots of teachers saying, oh, but the kids they get frustrated. It's hard work to learn how to decode work.

spk_0 It is. You just saw me light up. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's the best thing a teacher can say. That actually shows and that should be celebrated when the teacher sees particularly in kindergarten and first grade.

spk_0 How difficult this is that really should be celebrated both at the teacher between and amongst the teachers and between and amongst the students.

spk_0 That tells you that you're doing something right. Yeah, it's only by going through this R. U. S. phase of having you that this is really like the partial into the full alphabetic phase.

spk_0 My favorite transition point is only when you go through that that you're primed and ready for that efficient automatic word retrieval that you mentioned before.

spk_0 And you really have to go through the growing pains of it. Yeah. And you know, I don't want I don't want anybody any of our listeners to get this sense that we want classrooms to be like, work harder, work harder.

spk_0 Never I'll tell you yeah, I'll tell you it is hard work, but to see and you know this to to see a kindergarteners eyes light up when they can read a decodable passage that adults say this is a boring passage.

spk_0 Right kindergarten kid is like, but I just read this. Oh, it's the joy of my career. I mean, this is again, this is really what I do now in my intervention programs.

spk_0 And we just live in this space of experiencing these moments for whom the students are primed and at that phase and ready to move on.

spk_0 And we often also work with older students taking me back to my roots older students who never had the instruction or enough time in the instruction that they needed to form more efficient pathways.

spk_0 And they, you know, that joy that you're just saying that confidence that is built. Oh, it's just it's the best of teaching. It's like what we're all as reading, you know, support people here, what we're all in it for for sure.

spk_0 And I'm glad you brought up the and mentioned the idea of some kids just don't have enough time because what we do know is all kids sort of acquire this this efficient mapping at different levels and particularly with kids with neurodivergent such as dyslexia, it does take more time and more practice.

spk_0 That's exactly right. And it will happen. It will happen. You know, we never act. I always have this saying like we never acquiesce to illiteracy.

spk_0 Don't acquiesce to it. You have we all as a community that supports all readers. We have to figure out what instruction needs to provide it and what dosage over what duration of time. And it will happen.

spk_0 And it will happen to, you know, at different points all all of these things. I was just working, you know, I'm in and out of the New York City public schools and I was just sitting next to a seventh creator who was working on he just moved out of our instructional levels on CDC, we're reading and was moving into blends.

spk_0 And I saw incredible work happening in this tutoring session and this student was getting it and they just needed more time, more direct instruction, more modeling, more examples.

spk_0 And they needed a really safe environment. Yeah.

spk_0 To be who they are as a reader and to build on their skills.

spk_0 Yeah, that's encouraging, isn't it? When you can see the support for that.

spk_0 You've been talking a lot about the connection to this isn't just about reading, but you importantly say this is a reading spelling connection.

spk_0 Why do you think that's a critical connection to make, especially for teachers that are doing this work every day?

spk_0 Absolutely. We become myself included so focused on reading that we may at times forget about the reciprocal relationship between reading and spelling as Dr. Erie calls it.

spk_0 It's two sides of the same coin. And there's a very high correlation in the social behavioral sciences between reading and spelling.

spk_0 And that means that they support one another. So it's not just that reading supports spelling, which is I think we kind of get kind of obsessed like we think that that's the way it goes.

spk_0 It's also that spelling supports reading.

spk_0 And so you really are working on these two or should be working on these two in tandem.

spk_0 I see so much more reading instruction happening in schools and far less spelling instruction.

spk_0 And you know, if you're only focused on phonics and not on spelling, you're going to miss a whole bunch of decoding instruction word analysis work.

spk_0 Yeah. Yeah. And you do mention the fact that spelling is actually harder than reading. And why is that?

spk_0 Well, it is this recognition versus retrieval situation that's going on again cognitively when you are reading the writer, the author has provided you with the orthographic representation of the words.

spk_0 So you don't have to guess how you're supposed what representation of the long a sound needs to be used when you're spelling you hopefully have stored many representations of the long a sound is it a i is it a consonant e we could go on and on there's a is a y e i g h.

spk_0 And you have to retrieve the correct one out of this multitude of options that matches the word that you're trying to spell with regards to which version of the word rain are you working on here and then what is the accurate spelling of that word.

spk_0 Yeah. And this becomes strained over time I talk about it. Molly and I talk about in the book about this tension that builds that or that can build for some students between reading and spelling and with my grad students over at the university I use a rubber band.

spk_0 And it's like think about a rubber band that's just you know relaxed laying on the table and you've got your spelling skills you've got your reading skills and they're developing and thinking of the earlier age students and things are pretty okay usually when we're in the one to one letter sound correspondence zone can regard in early first grade.

spk_0 And then things become more complex as we are dealing with representations where two letters make one sound where three letters make one sound where there's all these different vowel patterns reading can continue to progress because again it's an easier recognition process.

spk_0 And spelling may be lagging behind and so attention starts forming in that rubber band. And as an instructor you want to keep an eye on how far behind is the spelling from the reading skills.

spk_0 And I always acknowledge like yeah there there will be a tension because one is a more difficult thing to do than the other. But you got to keep an eye to make sure that that tension doesn't become so intense that it could the rubber band could potentially snap.

spk_0 Yeah that's a great analogy and it's got me thinking about well English is not as irregular as people think it is it's just very complex it's a little the sounds spelling patterns are way more so I'm trying to learn Spanish and Spanish is much more transparent and so I've noticed that difference and you know just like actively thinking about that difference so much absolutely.

spk_0 We have a really hard job as reading teachers. Yes right we are dealing with one of the most opaque or theographies in the world.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 And it's a very rich or theography because we have borrowed from so many other languages.

spk_0 It does require a level of training particularly for our early elementary teachers that I don't think we have provided I know I never received it until I went and got my PhD and I want to be very clear I do not think everyone needs to go and get the know we don't you don't need a PhD to have that knowledge that should come in all teacher training.

spk_0 Yeah the way you said the complexity of the English language every teacher I've ever met can handle it once we teach it.

spk_0 Yeah it's important to teach it so people know that was a very long winded way of saying no it's great no I totally get it.

spk_0 I want to take a step back real quick because this season season 10 is all about comprehension right and so why are we talking about orthographic mapping well we know that orthographic mapping will either support or repeat comprehension so you can't even get to comprehension can you talk a little bit more about that for us sure I'm going to kind of double down on some of the things that we mentioned before so we're going to go back to this idea of the reading.

spk_0 Knowing the brain and that the circuits in the in the brain need to coordinate to read spell in make meanings of words.

spk_0 In the emergent reader this circuit or in this older striving reader this circuit is inefficient so its taxing it's laborious it requires a lot of effort.

spk_0 Only through repeated practice reading and spouting these words just like a sport as I've mentioned.

spk_0 only through that do they require less effort.

spk_0 They become more efficient in order to decode and spell words accurately.

spk_0 And this efficiency is what allows more mental energy to be available for reading comprehension

spk_0 or to focus on what you are reading and the decoding kind of falls into the background

spk_0 and the comprehension comes to the foreground.

spk_0 When you are first learning to read, it is the decoding that is at the foreground

spk_0 and your comprehension is like, I kind of got the gist of that.

spk_0 And let me not neglect writing.

spk_0 That is the same with the relationship between spelling.

spk_0 If you have efficient spelling, you can put more time, more time, mental energy into your writing composition

spk_0 versus each word that you are about to put down on the page worrying about,

spk_0 do I know how to spell that? Should I pick an easier word?

spk_0 Etc.

spk_0 So your ability to orthographically map and store words in long-term memory for automatic retrieval

spk_0 winds up being the key to comprehension.

spk_0 Without it, a student won't have this efficient retrieval, which impedes fluency.

spk_0 And as we know, students who are less fluent often read less.

spk_0 That is the Matthew effect.

spk_0 And when you read less, that impedes vocabulary because the more you read,

spk_0 the more vocabulary words you acquire.

spk_0 And it impedes comprehension.

spk_0 The more you read, the more background knowledge you are building.

spk_0 So it is not just about your comprehension in the moment.

spk_0 It is this compounding effect that a lack of automatic word retrieval has on your

spk_0 corpus of knowledge.

spk_0 If you don't have other ways of obtaining knowledge, if you don't have a lot of people

spk_0 reading to you in audio books.

spk_0 Wow.

spk_0 If it's okay, I'll just mention this one other thing about,

spk_0 I know I mentioned this reciprocal relationship between reading and spelling.

spk_0 Yep.

spk_0 There's also this reciprocal relationship between efficient, efficiency and storing words in memory

spk_0 and comprehension that's evidenced by the set, by set for variability.

spk_0 So I'm, I know on your podcast you've talked about set for variability.

spk_0 We actually haven't yet.

spk_0 Oh, okay.

spk_0 So this is a concept that's definitely, you know, floating around the reading science realm,

spk_0 very well established, this theory of set for variability, where when you have a word stored in memory

spk_0 and you attempt to read a word, let's say you're attempting to read an unknown word,

spk_0 unknown via your ability to map the spelling to pronunciation.

spk_0 So you're trying to decode it for the first or one of the first times that you're working on.

spk_0 So it doesn't have to be the first, right?

spk_0 As we know, emergent readers need lots of attempts.

spk_0 If you have the pronunciation of this word or the meaning of this word, let's, to simplify,

spk_0 you've heard this word before.

spk_0 If you have that stored in memory, which is, it winds up being critically important and quite valuable

spk_0 to your ability to decode the word.

spk_0 Wow.

spk_0 So I often use the word mitten.

spk_0 I'm in, I live in Brooklyn, we're wearing mittens all through the winter, right?

spk_0 The gloves are mittens.

spk_0 And I once saw this student decoding the word mitten and they kept saying, and they had these,

spk_0 they were saying mitten, ten, mitten, ten.

spk_0 And they're looking at the instructor, mitten, ten.

spk_0 And it just, no clue.

spk_0 And this was a student who is new to New York and they had not heard the word mitten before.

spk_0 And if they had had the word stored as a vocabulary word through their oral language,

spk_0 they would have probably said mitten, oh, mitten.

spk_0 Mitten.

spk_0 Yeah, I know what a mitten is.

spk_0 Oh, and then it becomes kind of the thing of like, oh, cool, that's how you spell mitten.

spk_0 I got you.

spk_0 That's great.

spk_0 Thanks for that example.

spk_0 It's super important.

spk_0 And all that you're talking about, I mean, for listeners, if you need to be reminded of the importance of word recognition instruction and getting kids strong in the cognitive process of orthographic mapping,

spk_0 here's another reminder, why it's so important on our quest for comprehension and deeper comprehension.

spk_0 I'm going to make a transition here to why it's so important to get intervention as quickly as possible.

spk_0 Can you talk a little bit about effective intervention and what it looks like?

spk_0 I would be happy to.

spk_0 And you'll have to cut me off because this is really my passion.

spk_0 So we will.

spk_0 Okay.

spk_0 You'll edit this out.

spk_0 I very much live in the space of emergent reading interventions.

spk_0 And I mentioned we can avoid a lot of interventions.

spk_0 If we start with good word reading habits, if we start with excellent explicit systematic instruction that facilitates orthographic mapping, we can also, I think, prevent a lot of intervention.

spk_0 One students have letter sound knowledge that you start applying it.

spk_0 You don't have to have all of your letters sound knowledge established.

spk_0 You can establish some of it.

spk_0 And then you start applying it to word reading and spelling.

spk_0 So a set of letters, STAPI, right?

spk_0 You can make a whole bunch of words.

spk_0 And so it's got it really should be around this batching of letter sound knowledge applying it to word reading and spelling.

spk_0 I also mentioned no guessing.

spk_0 And then intervention intervention is inevitable.

spk_0 Students will need their student group of students.

spk_0 Well, I should be careful with what I'm saying here.

spk_0 There is excellent research that shows when this tier one instruction is done rigorously.

spk_0 There are smaller groups of students who will need interventions.

spk_0 I exist in a space where up to this point, large swaths of students in the schools that I work need early reading interventions.

spk_0 So whether you have a few students that need it, whether you have a lot of students that need it, reading interventions are going to be a part of what your school needs to provide to students.

spk_0 And what I have researched and what I know from my work in early literacy interventions is that these interventions need to be provided in what's called high impact ways.

spk_0 So that needs to be three to five days a week.

spk_0 And we have figured out how to do this through CUNY reading fellows and through my work at the nonprofit.

spk_0 These students providing an intervention one to two days a week is not going to move the needle in the way that these students need in order to really catch up and reach benchmark.

spk_0 So it needs to be three to five days a week.

spk_0 And you need to think about how much time you're working with that student.

spk_0 Kindergarners are first graders.

spk_0 You're somewhere between the 20 to 35 minute zone, 20 minutes can get the job done for a second half of the year of kindergarten.

spk_0 Yeah.

spk_0 A first grader might need 30, 35 minutes, a second grader might need 40 minutes.

spk_0 The intervention must be structured literacy, multi component.

spk_0 You're not just doing skills and isolation over and over.

spk_0 You're taking those skills and isolation.

spk_0 You're applying it to contacts.

spk_0 You're doing vocabulary building all the way through with whatever words the students don't know the meaning to.

spk_0 Also, you're really thoughtfully considering the text so that in context for me that is you've got your decodable sentence that eventually built a decodable book reading.

spk_0 And you're very thoughtful about matching those decodable books to your phonics scope and sequence.

spk_0 And then over time, you're considering when are we moving away from books that are 90% decodable to books that are 80, 70,

spk_0 then 60% decodable, which is really like loosening the reins on decodability over time.

spk_0 Very interesting.

spk_0 Well, I do know that bringing it back to the book that you've written, that some of the activities and strategies that you include in there,

spk_0 which I love because they're by grade level, can be used both in tier one and then extended and applied into intervention, which will actually help support.

spk_0 That's exactly right.

spk_0 And some of these are interventions that are a part of reading intervention work that I do and that Molly does and others take it way beyond that.

spk_0 We want to make sure to note that we don't expect that these activities will be applied to every single word that you're ever going to teach.

spk_0 That's not reasonable.

spk_0

spk_0 But what we are supporting or attempting to support here is providing a corpus of activities that would help with this facilitation process and then ask students strengthen their ability to accurately decode and spell words.

spk_0 They are able to apply that knowledge and it extends beyond the words that they have just worked on in instructional time.

spk_0 Hmm. It makes a lot of sense.

spk_0 Well, any final thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners about supporting students when it either comes to orthographic mapping or, you know, into comprehension?

spk_0 Maybe we should end with this, which is that there's two non-negotiables that I know you're doing such a good job addressing on your podcast.

spk_0 There is comprehension building your knowledge that goes without saying and the early years are so complicated when it comes to this because you have to carve out equal amounts of time to do knowledge building and subject areas.

spk_0 And you have to do this in all sorts of ways. I mentioned audio books. I mentioned read allows I rich libraries in your classrooms, in your schools, in your communities, getting parents involved is key and that really involves sending resources home to read out loud sending digital text home.

spk_0 And I could go on and on. That is as important as what I've Yammer Don about in this podcast, which is this technical moment of lifting off into word reading and spelling.

spk_0 And for anyone not in the early childhood space, maybe you're realizing like, wow, or maybe you've been existing in the early childhood space and you haven't been giving yourself enough credit for how complex this is to get it right in the early years.

spk_0 Those two skill sets are building at the same time and they are interrelated interwoven and critical for becoming a proficient reader.

spk_0 And writer and writer. Sorry, oh my gosh, I've been so good until this very last minute. I'm saying reading and writing. That's exactly it.

spk_0 Yeah, this is so great. This has been so helpful, Katie. I appreciate you taking the time talking with our audience and we will get a link in the show notes to the book. I'm sure people are already aware of it, but it's fabulous. And thank you for the work you and Molly did to bring this to life for our listeners. So we appreciate you.

spk_0 Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time to be on your podcast.

spk_0 That was Dr. Katie Pace Miles. She's an associate professor and director of reading science advanced certificate at Brooklyn College City University of New York. Along with Molly Ness, she authored the recent book, Making Word Stick, a four step instructional routine to power up orthographic mapping.

spk_0 We'll have a link in the show notes and please don't forget to submit your questions about comprehension. We'd love to address them in an upcoming episode. Go to amplify.com slash SOR mailbag.

spk_0 We'll also have a link in the show notes. Next time on science of reading the podcast, October is dyslexia awareness month and we'll be releasing a brand new addition of science of reading essentials on dyslexia.

spk_0 This episode will give you the critical foundational information you need to better understand dyslexia and to serve your students.

spk_0 We are largely focused still focused on the reactive deficit driven way to fail model instead of the development of preventive approaches or pro active approaches.

spk_0 The myth is still out there that it's not we're not able to screen early for risk of dyslexia. It's only continuum of severity, which makes it very difficult to operationalize.

spk_0 That's coming up next time. Also our sister podcast beyond my years just launched its second season after a webby award winning debut, host Anna Torres kicked off season two by exploring the research on joy and laughter and how they can be leveraged a fair.

spk_0 And effectively in schools, here's what the research also said that humor can be used to listen and maintain attention improve retention and information increase energy and enjoyment that's available now in the beyond my years podcast feed will have a link in the show notes.

spk_0 Science of reading the podcast is brought to you by amplify I'm Susan Lambert. Thank you so much for listening.

spk_0 Remember to save your spot for the upcoming science of reading webinar week comprehension connections building the bridge between reading and understanding beginning on September 29th.

spk_0 We're hosting daily hour long webinars all about comprehension featuring some past and future podcast guests including Dr. Sonia Cabell, Dr. Hazian Huang, Dr. Gina Bianca Rosa, Dr.

spk_0 Julie A. Van Dyke and more find information on all five sessions and register at amplify.com slash fall S. O. R webinars.

S10 E2: Orthographic mapping is a cognitive process, with Katie Pace Miles, Ph.D.

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